Poverty experts were needed among David Cameron's entourage to Asia

On his recent trip to Asia, David Cameron should have taken with him experts on poverty reduction and labour rights. This would have sent the message that Britain puts people before profits – even in a recession

David Cameron's trip to China was aimed at helping trade between the countries. Photograph: PA Archive

Poverty experts were needed among David Cameron's entourage to Asia

On his recent trip to Asia, David Cameron should have taken with him experts on poverty reduction and labour rights. This would have sent the message that Britain puts people before profits – even in a recession

Tuesday 23 November 2010 04.00 EST
First published on Tuesday 23 November 2010 04.00 EST

The British prime minister, David Cameron, took half of London with him on his trip to China to promote trade and investment earlier this month. Accompanying him were ministers for finance, business and energy, the head of the football league, and some glamorous shoe designer that my female friends have heard of. But there were some notable absentees.

Foreign investment (whether direct or portfolio) and trade can be incredible forces for good, both in economic and cultural terms, if wealth and jobs are created and solutions shared across borders. As the west seeks to emerge from recession, and the Asian states look at new opportunities, there is little of more importance than trade and business links.

But there is another side of the coin. Too often, as everyone knows, multinationals have been complicit in displacement, human rights abuses, undermining trade unions and labour rights, and environmental degradation.

The public has repeatedly expressed its insistence that profits should not be made at any cost. No to displacement, deforestation, poor labour rights, the extinction of tribes and rare species. Not in our name.

Major progress has been made on corporate responsibility in the last couple of decades, as civil society organisations in the west have joined with local organisations to pressure international companies to follow basic standards and ensure that they have a positive social and environmental impact.

But as the crisis-hit west seeks competitive advantage in foreign countries, governments might be tempted to quietly fall back from even the limited progress that has been made. It is one thing being ethical in a benign context, some might allow themselves to think, quite another when you are trying to stave off recession. The danger is a race to the bottom on standards, particularly as non-western competitors, notably China, have demonstrated themselves to be less concerned about such issues than their western counterparts.

The coalition government has been very vocal in its insistence that it will put British interests first in its trade ties with other countries and in international relations in general. In a speech in London last week, Cameron said: "Above all, our foreign policy is more hard-headed in this respect. It will focus like a laser on defending and advancing Britain's national interest." While in India he referred to a "new, commercial foreign policy in action", possibly repudiating the explicitly "ethical" foreign policy that Robin Cook announced (but failed to deliver) more than a decade ago.

This is not surprising – it is the prerogative of all governments to seek their national interest. But there has been little or nothing from the new government on the importance of maintaining high ethical standards in international business, and this is worrying. Progress made on standards over the past 20 years should be entrenched and stepped up, with laggards being coerced by treaty and political pressure into joining a race to the top. It is worth noting, incidentally, that pressure to raise standards in poor countries works in favour of workers in richer countries who otherwise risk seeing their jobs and wages further undercut by low costs abroad.

Unfortunately, the direction in which the UK government's Department for International Development (DfID) appears to be heading is that of a narrow aid agency, rather than a development agency holding an anti-poverty lens up to all aspects of government policy. Aid is largely irrelevant to poverty reduction in India, although it may help at the margins. The most important thing rich countries can do for India (and many other countries) at the moment is to ensure that business is a force for good, not harm, and to play their part in promoting pro-poor growth, not the rampantly unequal and environmentally devastating growth that has been the norm for the last few decades.

So who was missing on the trade delegation to China? Experts on poverty reduction, environmental degradation and labour rights. People trusted both by the private sector and civil society to ensure that business is carried out in an ethical way. As western countries and businesses realise how much more they will have to compete in the years ahead to keep their economies booming they should not lose their moral compass. Rather than just following money, they should take pride in high standards of business, even if this means higher costs. These experts should be regarded as integral and respected players on trade missions. Having them on the team would send a simple message: We put people before profit, even in a recession.